It was all about the minnows.

So very happy to be included in the latest issue of Zee Zahava’s ‘Lost Paper’. 'Water' was the theme for this collection of short non-fiction prose -- and there are so many compelling stories here. Very grateful to be among them.

It was all about the minnows. I abandoned my sandwich on our blanket mid-picnic and followed the grass to a short wall rimming the lake. A fallen willow branch, thin like my father’s bamboo fly rod he liked to whip in the backyard, lay at my feet. I used to chase the small yellow training weights flickering in the grass after each cast. The lake that afternoon seemed full of those pale darting fish and I just knew my rod could catch them. By the third stroke of my imagination I’d lost my balance and tumbled into the water, losing the willow and a shoe. The next summer my father gave me a short fly rod for my eighth birthday and a few backyard casting lessons from his end of the line.

- Lorraine A Padden